Pride And Pregnancy

Two

As Caroline headed out into the oppressive South Dakota heat at the end of the day, she knew she should be thinking about who had sent the flowers. Or about James Carlson’s brief reply to her email saying he had contacted an associate, who would be in touch. She should be thinking about the day’s cases. Or tomorrow’s cases.

At the very least, she should be thinking about what she was going to eat for dinner. She had been relying heavily on carryout for the last couple of months, because she hadn’t finished unpacking yet. She should be formulating her plan of attack to get the remaining boxes emptied so she could have a fully functional kitchen again by this weekend at the latest and make better food choices.

She wasn’t thinking about any of those things. Instead, all she could think about was a certain FBI agent with incredible eyes.

Thomas Yellow Bird. She shivered just thinking of the way his gaze had connected with hers across the courtroom. Even at that distance, she’d felt the heat behind his gaze. Oh, he was intense. The way he’d kept his cool under fire when that defense attorney had gone after him? The way he’d glared at the accused? Hell, the way he’d let the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile that had threatened to melt her faster than ice cream on a summer day when he’d said he was guilty of speeding?

So dangerous. Because if he could have this sort of effect on her with just a look, what would he be capable of with his hands—or without an audience?

She hadn’t had the time or inclination to investigate the dating scene in the greater Pierre area. She assumed the pool of eligible men would be considerably smaller than it was in Minneapolis—not that she’d dated a lot back home. It’d been low on her priority list, both there and here. Messy relationships were just that—messy. Dating—and sex—left too much room for mistakes, the kind she’d dodged once already.

No, thank you. She did not need to slip up and get tied to a man she wasn’t even sure she wanted to marry. Her career was far more important than that.

Besides, she spent most of her time with lawyers and alleged criminals. Her bailiff was married. It wasn’t like an attractive, intelligent man she could date without a conflict of professional interest just showed up in her courtroom every day.

Except for today. Maybe.

Because there was that small matter of whether or not he patronized prostitutes. That was a deal breaker.

Lost in thought, she rounded the corner of the courthouse and pulled up short. Because an attractive, intelligent man—FBI Special Agent Thomas Yellow Bird—was leaning on a sleek muscle car parked two slots down from her Volvo. Her nipples tightened immediately, and only one thing could soothe them.

Him.

She shook that thought right out of her head. Good Lord, a man shouldn’t look this sinful—and in those sunglasses? He was every bad-boy fantasy come to life. But she’d watched him on the stand and seen flashes of humor underneath his intense looks and stoic expressions—and that? That was what made him truly sexy.

Was secretly lusting after an FBI agent in a great suit a conflict of interest? God, she hoped not. Because that suit was amazing on him.

“Agent Yellow Bird,” she said when he straightened. “This is a surprise.”

One corner of his mouth kicked up as he pulled his sunglasses off. “Not a bad one, I hope.”

It wasn’t like they’d had a personal conversation in court today. There’d been several feet of plywood between them. She’d been wearing her robes. Everything had been mediated through Lasky and Smith. Cheryl had recorded every word.

Here? None of those barriers existed.

“That depends,” she answered honestly. Because if he were going to ask her out, it could be a very good thing. But if this was about something else...then maybe not so much.

His gaze drifted over her, a leisurely appraisal that did nothing for Caroline’s peace of mind right now. She’d thought she’d been imagining that appraisal in the courtroom when she’d met his gaze across the crowded courtroom and everything about her—her clothes, her skin—had suddenly felt too tight and too loose at the same time.

No, no—not lusting after him. Lust was a weakness and weakness was a risk. The heat flooding her body had more to do with the July sun than this man.

As his gaze made its way back up to her face, a look of appreciation plain to see, she knew she wasn’t imagining this. When he spoke, it was almost a relief. “I wanted to thank you for having my back today.”

She waved away this statement, glad to have something to focus on other than his piercing eyes. “Just doing my job. Last time I checked, eating dinner wasn’t a conflict of interest.” Unlike this conversation. Maybe. “I have no desire in being perceived as weak on the bench. I run a tight ship.”

“So I noticed.”

This would be a wonderful time for him to assure her that he didn’t patronize prostitutes—in fact, it’d be great if he didn’t eat dinner with them at all. She tried to keep in mind what Smith had said in his objections—perhaps Agent Yellow Bird had been meeting with informants or some other reasonable explanation that could be tied directly to his job.

Strangely, she wasn’t feeling reasonable about Agent Yellow Bird right now. She steeled her resolve. She couldn’t be swayed by a gorgeous man in a great suit any more than she could be influenced by cut flowers. Not even loyalty could corrupt her. Not anymore.

Everything about him—his gaze, his manner—was intense. And, at least right now, they were on the same side. She’d hate to be a criminal in his sights.

“Well,” she said, feeling awkward about this whole encounter.

“Well,” he agreed. He shoved off his car—an aggressive-looking black thing with a silver stripe on the hood that screamed power—and extended his hand. His suit jacket shifted, and she caught a glimpse of his gun. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Tom Yellow Bird.”

“Tom.” She hesitated before slipping her palm into his. This didn’t count as a conflict of interest, right? Of course not. This was merely a...professional courtesy. Yes, that was it. “Caroline Jennings.”

That got her a real smile—one that took him from intensely handsome to devastatingly so. Her knees weakened—weakened, for God’s sake! It only got worse when he said, “Caroline,” in a voice that was closer to reverence than respectability as his fingers closed around hers.

A rush of what felt like electricity passed from where her skin met his, so powerful that Caroline jolted. Images flashed through her mind of him pulling her in closer, his mouth covering hers, his hands covering...

“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back. She knew she was blushing fiercely, but she was going to blame that on the heat. “I generate a lot of static electricity.” Which was true. In the winter, when the air was dry and she was walking on carpeting.

It was at least ninety-four out today, with humidity she could swim in. She was so hot that sweat was beginning to trickle down her back.

He notched an eyebrow at her, and she got the feeling he was laughing. But definitely on the inside, because his mouth didn’t move from that cocky half grin.

Her breasts ached, and she didn’t think she could blame that on the sun. She was flushed and desperately needed to get the hell out of her skirt suit to cool down. What she wouldn’t give for a swim in a cool pool right now.

Alone. Definitely alone. Not with Agent Tom Yellow Bird. Nope.

“About the flowers,” Tom said, looking almost regretful about bringing up the subject as he leaned back against his spotless car.

Caroline recoiled. “What?” It wasn’t as if the fact that she’d received the bouquet wasn’t common knowledge—it was. Everyone in the courthouse knew, thanks to Andrea passing out roses to anyone who’d take some. Leland had taken a huge bunch home for his wife. Even Cheryl had taken a few, favoring Caroline with a rare smile. Caroline had left the remaining few blooms in her office. She didn’t want them in her house.

Had Agent Yellow Bird sent them? Was this whole conversation—the intense looks, the cocky grins—because he was trying to butter her up?

Crap, what if Lasky had been right? What if Agent Tom Yellow Bird was crooked and prostitutes were just the tip of the iceberg?

Suddenly her blood was running cold. She moved to step past him. “The flowers were lovely. But I’m not interested.”

* * *

Damn, she was tough.

“Whoa,” Tom said, holding his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “I didn’t send them.”

“I’m sure,” Caroline murmured, stepping around him and heading for her car as if he suddenly smelled.

“Caroline,” he said again, and damn if it didn’t come out with a note of tenderness. Which was ridiculous. He had no reason to feel tender toward her at all. She was his assignment, whether she liked it or not. It’d be easier if she cooperated, of course, but he’d get to the bottom of things one way or the other.

He was nothing if not patient.

She began to walk faster. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not interested. I hold myself to a higher standard of ethics and integrity.”

What the hell? Clearly, she thought he’d sent the flowers. The idea was so comical he almost laughed. “Wait.” He fell in step beside her. “Carlson sent me.”

“Did he?” She didn’t stop.

He dug his phone out of his pocket. If she wouldn’t believe him, maybe she’d believe Carlson. “Here.” Just as she made it to her car, he shoved his phone in front of her face. She had to stop to keep from slamming her nose into the screen. “See?”

She shot him an irritated look—which made him smile. She was tough—but he was tougher.

Begrudgingly, she read Carlson’s email out loud. “‘Tom—the new judge, Caroline Jennings, contacted me. An anonymous person sent her flowers and apparently that’s out of the ordinary for her. See what you can find out. If we’re lucky, this will open the case back up. Maggie sends her love. Carlson.’”

She frowned as she read it. This was as close as Tom had been to her and again, he was surrounded by the perfume of roses. He wanted to lean in close and press his lips against the base of her neck to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled—but if he’d gauged Caroline Jennings right, she probably had Mace on her keys. Given the way she was holding her body, he’d bet she’d taken some self-defense classes at some point.

Good for her. He liked a woman who wasn’t afraid to defend herself.

The moment that thought popped up, Tom slammed the door on it. He didn’t like Judge Jennings, no matter how sweet she smelled or how strongly he felt that pull. This was about the case. The job was all he had.

She angled her body toward his, and a primal part of his brain crowed in satisfaction when she didn’t step back. If anything, it felt like she was challenging his space with her body. “And I’m supposed to believe that’s on the level, huh?”

God, he’d like to be challenged. She was simply magnificent—even better out of her robes. “I don’t play games, Caroline,” he said. No matter how much he might want to. “Not about something like this.”

She studied him for a moment. “That implies you play games in other situations, though.”

His lips twisted to one side and he crossed his arms, because if he didn’t, he might start smiling and that was bad for his image as a no-holds-barred lawman. “That all depends on the game, doesn’t it?”

“I put more stock in the players.”

So much for his image, because he burst out laughing at that. Caroline took a step back, her hands clenched at her sides and her back ramrod straight—which was completely at odds with the unexpectedly intense look of...longing? She looked less like a woman about to punch him and more like...

Like she was holding herself back. Like she wanted to laugh with him. Maybe do even more with him.

If he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into his chest, would she break his nose or would she go all soft and womanly against him? How long had it been since he’d had a woman in his arms?

It absolutely did not matter—nor did it matter that he knew exactly how long it’d been. What mattered was cracking this case.

“I don’t sleep with them.”

“What?” She physically recoiled, pushing herself closer to the door.

“The prostitutes,” he explained. “I don’t sleep with them. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? What I do in my free time?”

“It’s none of my business what you do when you’re off duty,” she said in a stiff voice, shrinking even farther away from him. “It’s a free country.”

That made him grin again. “This country is bought and paid for, and you and I both know it,” he said, surprised at the bitterness that sneaked in there. “I buy them dinner,” he went on, wondering if someone like Caroline Jennings would ever really be able to understand. “They’re mostly young, mostly girls—mostly being forced to work against their will. I treat them like people, not criminals—show them there’s another way. When they’re ready, I help them get away and get clean. And until they are, I make sure they’re eating, give them enough money they don’t have to work that night.”

“That’s...” She blinked. “Really?”

“Really. I don’t sleep with them.” For some ridiculous reason, he almost let the truth slip free—he didn’t sleep with anyone. It was none of her business—but he wanted to make sure she knew he operated with all the ethical integrity she valued. “Carlson can back me up on that.”

“Who’s Maggie?”

Interesting. There was no good reason for her to be concerned about Maggie sending Tom her love, unless...

Unless Caroline was trying to figure out if he was attached. “Carlson’s wife. We grew up on the same reservation together.” He left out the part where he’d gone off to Washington, DC, and joined the FBI, leaving Maggie vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

There was a reason he didn’t sleep with prostitutes. But that wasn’t his story to tell—it was Maggie’s. He stuck to the facts.

The breeze gusted, surrounding him with her scent. He couldn’t help leaning forward and inhaling. “Roses,” he murmured, his voice unexpectedly tender again. He really needed to stop with the tenderness.

She flushed again, and although he shouldn’t, he hoped it wasn’t from the heat. “I beg your pardon?”

“You smell of roses.” Somehow, he managed to put another step between them. “Is that your normal perfume, or was that from the delivery?” There. That was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, from a law-enforcement perspective.

“From the flowers. The bouquet was huge. At least a hundred stems.”

“All roses?”

She thought about that. “Mixed. Lilies and carnations—a little bit of everything, really. But mostly roses.”

In other words, it hadn’t been cheap. He tried to visualize how big a vase with a hundred stems would be. “But you’re not taking any home with you?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want them. My clerk got rid of most of them. Leland took home a huge bunch for his wife.”

“Leland’s a good guy,” Tom replied, as if this were normal small talk when it was anything but.

“How do I know I can trust you?” she blurted out.

“My record speaks for itself.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and held it out to her. “You don’t know what you’re up against here. This kind of corruption is insidious and nearly impossible to track, Caroline. But if there’s anything else out of the ordinary—and I mean anything—don’t hesitate to call me. Or Carlson,” he added, almost as an afterthought. He didn’t want her to call Carlson, though. He wanted her to call him. For any reason. “No detail is too small. Names, car makes—anything you remember can be helpful.”

After a long moment—so long, in fact, that he began to wonder if she was going to take the card at all—she asked, “So we’re to work together?”

He heard the question she didn’t ask. “On this case, yes.”

But if it weren’t for this case...

She took the card from him and slid it into her shirt pocket. He did his best not to stare at the motion. Damn.

She gave him that look again, the one that made him think she was holding herself back. “Fine.”

He straightened and gave her a little salute. “After this case...” He turned and headed to his car. “Have a good evening, Caroline,” he called over his shoulder.

She gasped and he almost, almost spun back on his heel and captured that little noise with a kiss.

But he didn’t. Instead, he climbed into the driver’s seat of his Camaro, gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot as fast as he could.

He needed to put a lot of distance between him and Caroline Jennings. Because, no matter how much he might be attracted to her, he wasn’t about to compromise this case for her.

And that was final.

Three

For a while, nothing happened. There were no more mysterious flower deliveries—or, for that matter, any kind of deliveries. The remaining half dozen roses on Caroline’s desk withered and died. Andrea threw them away. People in the courthouse seemed friendlier—apparently, handing out scads of flowers made Caroline quite popular. Other than that, though, things continued on as they had before.

Before Agent Tom Yellow Bird had shown up in her courtroom.

She got up, went for a jog before the heat got oppressive, went to the courthouse and then came home. No mysterious gifts, no handsome men—mysterious or otherwise. No surprises. Everything went exactly as it was supposed to. Which was good. Great, even.

If she didn’t have Tom’s card in her pocket—and that electric memory of shaking his hand—she would have been tempted to convince herself she had imagined the whole thing. A fantasy she’d invented to alleviate boredom instead of a flesh-and-blood man. Fantasies were always safer, anyway.

But...there were times when she could almost feel his presence. She’d come out of the courthouse and pull up short, looking for his black muscle car with the silver stripe on the hood, but he was never there. And the fact that disappointed her was irritating.

She had not developed a crush on the man. No crushes. That was that.

Just because he was an officer of the law with a gun concealed under his jacket, with eyes that might be his biggest weapon—that was no reason to lust after the man. She didn’t need to see him again. It was better that way—at least, she finally had to admit to herself, it was better that way while his corruption investigation was still ongoing. The more distance between them, the less she would become infatuated.

Tom Yellow Bird was a mistake she wasn’t going to make.

It was a good theory, anyway. But he showed up in her dreams, a shadowy lover who drove her wild with his hands, his mouth, his body. She woke up tense and frustrated, and no electronic assistance could relieve the pressure. Her vibrator barely took the edge off, but it was enough.

Besides, she had other things to focus on. She finally finished unpacking her kitchen, although she still ate too much takeout. It was hard to work up the energy to cook when the temperature outside kept pushing a hundred.

Still, she tried. She came home one Friday after work three weeks after the floral delivery, juggling a couple of bags of groceries. Eggs were on sale and there was a recipe for summery quiche on Pinterest that she wanted to try. She had air-conditioning and a weekend to kick back. She was going to cook—or else. At the very least, she was going to eat ice cream.

She knew the moment she unlocked the front door that something was wrong. She couldn’t have said what it was because, when she looked around the living room, nothing seemed out of place. But there was an overwhelming sense that someone had been in her home that she didn’t dare ignore.

Heart pounding, she backed out of the house, pulling the door shut behind her. She carried the groceries right back out to the trunk of her car and then, hands shaking, she pulled her cell phone and Tom’s card out of her pocket and dialed.

He answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“Is this Agent Yellow Bird?” He sounded gruffer on the phone—so gruff, in fact, that she couldn’t be sure it was the same man who had laughed with her in the parking lot.